Another potential character...

[IamLEAM1983]

Been watching a few FarCry 4 Let's Plays, and it got me thinking...

Mab's been getting support mainly by selling her subordinates on Amaxi's promises of further power. A lot of would-be Fae aristocrats are stepping up and some might challenge Shield again - but what if one of them was smart enough to see through the bullshit and realize that Mab's own bid for power could be subverted for someone else's greater gain?

I figure most of the local Winter folk Mab's managed to recruit are mostly in line with the Gawain Machae school of thought. Mess up Shield's life and you get a prize. Furthermore, she tends to be more than a little bigoted and typically sticks to recruiting true Fae. Gubbin was basically Gawain's plus-one in the deal; Mab didn't care much about him.

But what if a fairly distant Wyldfae got some ideas? Not just that he could use that opportunity to rise in status, but to put Darkest Winter in the hands of the people who actually live in it? He wouldn't care about Shield or Amaxi or the Others, honestly, but playing Mab's game gets him to where he needs to go: close to Mab, and close enough to put an end to her reign and claim the throne.

I figure the Faerie side of Nepal is one of the harshest and most hostile places known to most Fae. It's steep, it's cold, oxygen can get rare on occasion - and it's where the Yetis, cousins of the Bugbears, come from. Mab doesn't set foot there too frequently seeing as she's more into frosted, flat and barren wastelands à la Snow Queen. She considers Nepal's Faeside to be a backwater of sorts, so she's left the local Wyldfae organize as they please.

The problem is that creates a perfect place for someone with ambition to take over and instate a forced regime. One of the Yetis did this, packing his kind's hardy nature and potential savagery in with a Hong Kong-bred Westernized education courtesy of the Triads. That's allowed him to turn the Nepalese and largely Faerie-based province of Naraka into a criminal nation of sorts, and he rules over it with an iron fist. It's not enough, though. Not for him. He's treated like a king in Naraka but regarded as a second-class citizen during protocol-mandated trips to London. He's sick of seeing his own people get short-changed and realizes he needs to bring legitimacy to Naraka if he wants to have a chance at leaving an impression in court.

He can't convince anyone; not a lot of European Fae travel to Nepal for any reasons other than mundane tourism. His only option is to take Mab's throne by force and right now, weakening her means getting her what she wants. Hope's Nexus, of course, along with pretty much all the other ones that could be feasibly reached.

I figure he'd be a creepily casual villain, maybe able to give Rendell a run for his money on the semantics or ideology department - but he has nothing to prove, not to him or to his subjects. He also doesn't have anything personal against our guys - they'd just be in his way. I'm pretty sure he'd try to bribe Shield out of the picture before trying anything rash, and he'd maybe try and appeal to the older types' globe-trotting sensibilities as men of the world.

Of course, it wouldn't work - and he'd be honestly saddened to be forced to sic his mercenaries on Shield's personnel...

[TennyoCeres84]

Sounds like an interesting idea for a sympathetic villain.